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Corlis Murray poses with former Abbott high school STEM interns participating in the company's college internship program.

Courtesy of Abbott

As the top engineer at Abbott, a $31 billion heath care company, Corlis Murray knows a thing or two about being a successful woman in the STEM world. But it’s not her day-to-day role managing hundreds of millions of dollars and a hundred thousand employees in more than 150 countries that has gotten her to superhero status among her peers and colleagues. Eight years ago, Corlis started a high school STEM internship program at Abbott to help give young people the same kind of unique opportunity she had been afforded as a 17-year-old.

At that time, she quit her $1.76 an hour job at Jack In The Box to take an internship at IBM – which ultimately changed the trajectory of her life. That rare high school internship gave Corlis role models who looked like her, African American and female, and demystified what it meant to be an engineer. With the mindset of using her power and influence to bring others along, Corlis is truly changing the lives of our future scientists and engineers, and creating a pipeline of talent we can all be thankful for.

I was lucky enough to catch up withCorlis Murray, Senior Vice President, Quality Assurance, Regulatory and Engineering Services at Abbott, to learn more about her mission and vision, and how the program has become such a wild success.

Nicole Fisher: You've had an incredible journey to become Abbott’s top engineer. And I've heard that you credit your path to an internship when you were 17. Can you explain that path to me and what that first exposure to engineering did for you?

Corlis Murray: I didn't have examples of engineers in my family, but my mom was a teacher and my grandfather, a Louisiana cotton farmer with an eighth-grade education, was great at math – a love he passed on to me.

Because I was good at math and science, my teachers and guidance counselor recommended me when IBM came to my inner-city Dallas school looking for a summer intern. I had to quit my $1.76-an-hour job at Jack In The Box to pursue it, which seemed like a big deal at the time because my boss had told me I could probably be a manager someday if I wanted to – and I wasn't sure what would happen after the internship was done.

What happened during that summer was nothing short of life-changing. Engineering, a field I really knew nothing about up until that point, was demystified for me. I was out in the field troubleshooting solutions for mainframe computer systems – think room-sized computers, similar to the one in the movie Hidden Figures – at a time when most women stayed at their desks. And I have to mention, too, that my mentor was an African-American man. While not a woman, he did look more like me than most individuals who dominated the field at the time. He showed me people who looked like me could, and did, succeed in this field, and gave me the little nudge of confidence I needed to really stick my heels in and pursue engineering as my career.

Nicole: So you started a high school STEM internship at Abbott to help give people the same kind of unique opportunities you were afforded. How long has this been your passion project, and what has the experience at Abbott been like over the years?

We got the Abbott high school program off the ground in 2012 with a pilot with three students in one location. Today, we get to have almost 40 students each summer from 7 cities across the United States.

If you think about it, this was really a very entrepreneurial venture. We learned so much. There's a lot to consider when you're working with minors, from all walks of life – from varying socio-economic levels to in some situations having both parents working in STEM. We've seen a wide range of situations and needs.

I've been incredibly blessed with the eager support of senior leadership at Abbott, and we've been able to work with students and families with special situations to make sure those circumstances didn't preclude them from having this experience.

Nicole: The program has students as young as 15 years old working on REAL Abbott projects – things such as Abbott’s Freestyle Libredevice that eliminates finger-pricks for people with diabetes. How in the world did you get Abbott to trust such young people with such important health and engineering work?

Corlis: We started with a pilot with just three students, and with each summer that passes, these kids prove themselves and gain our confidence. Their mentors sing their praises and I'm in a situation today where I have more people who want to take on a high school intern than I have room for. All it really takes is five minutes in a room with these students to think 'Wow – these kids are some of the most capable and innovative and creative people I've ever met.'

When we pick mentors to work with these students, we make sure we find engineers and researchers who look like the students or have similar experiences and who have a vested interest in their success. We teach these students not only the mechanics of engineering and the impact the profession can have on the world in a field like healthcare, but also the basics of interviewing, resume-building, presentation skills and more. Many of them come back for consecutive summers, so by the time they graduate high school, you can't tell the difference between them and our college interns!

Nicole: We all know the future depends on young people, but what is it about the future and young people that drives you?

Corlis: The future is everything in my opinion. Abbott is a forward-thinking company, and although I take lessons from obstacles I've overcome, I'm a forward-thinking person.

The future of science and engineering, math and technology – that's what really fires me up and gets me excited to do what I do. Every time I hear a story of a young person who's overcome or is pursuing STEM who hadn't considered it before – that validates everything. We can change these young people's lives just by exposing them to the right things. It's an honor really to be able to do work like this.

Nicole: I'm sure you've got metrics of success. But what are you most proud of about this STEM internship model and the outcomes to date?

Corlis: I am incredibly proud that our internship is open to all students, but by sourcing students from diverse areas at schools near areas where we work, two-thirds of them are young women and 60% are minorities. Nearly all of them (97%) go on to study STEM in college. And we've been hiring high school internship alumni on as full-time engineers at this company, participating in our professional development program.

Nicole: I'm guessing that your first internship at IBM didn't exactly have the diversity that you champion today. In fact, it's one of the things that really stands out about this initiative. Given that we've been hearing lately many diversity and inclusion roles at big companies are set up for failure, what's the secret to your success?

Corlis: I was fortunate to have an African-American mentor at IBM, which is just critical. If you don't see people who look like you in a field, it's harder to imagine your own success.

What we've done incredibly well through this program is we've said we are going to deeply care about these young people – and whatever personal obstacles they face, whatever things that might stand in their way of accepting a high school internship at Abbott, we're going to face those obstacles with them. Sometimes the issues are transportation issues, so we solve those for them. Sometimes they can't afford professional clothes, so we provide polos to all of our students. Sometimes it's health issues in their immediate family, or uncertainty from parents. Some of them have never met a STEM professional, so we make sure they have a diverse set of mentors. We work through all of that with our students, and through the process, we show them that we're in this for them, with them. That is inclusion.

Nicole: What's next? There are rumors you're taking this curriculum to several Fortune 100 and 500 companies in the near future. What can we expect?

Corlis: What we know is the issue of underrepresentation of women and minorities in STEM is bigger than Abbott. We can't solve it on our own.

But imagine a world where dozens, or hundreds or thousands, of science- and technology-based companies had similar initiatives. We are now partnered with STEMConnector, a consortium of companies committed to eliminating STEM talent gaps. Abbott is also in talks with other major companies interested in pursuing a similar program and have been informally sharing our "blueprint," based on what we've learned over the past eight years, to help with the hard-to-answer nitty gritty detail questions.

We want to help connect companies with the resources they need to reach out to diverse students in high school who are great at math and science but may never choose a career in those fields, because they don't understand what it means to work in them. We've got some other initiatives underway to help advance that new goal, so stay tuned.